Get You a Witch Who Can Do Both
I have a witch, and frankly, my witch is kind of an asshole. The last time I went to retrieve her noxious brews for my various ailments (insomnia, cramps, generalized malaise and disenchantment), she stood at the top of the stairs on her crumbling Bed-Stuy brownstone and gazed down at me at the bottom. An unseasonably warm afternoon in fall, I’d biked over, wearing cut-offs and some manner of billowy tank. She considered me at a distance, and gave me her prognosis:
“You have gained weight and you are still not engaged,” she declared. Her tone was steady yet mildly disappointed, as if she were announcing that the B train is now running over the F line.
I should mention also that my witch is French, which makes her proclamations all the more world-weary, and smug.
“You ave gained weight and you are still not en-ghageéd.”
I mean, FAIR, all true. But the saddest part still is that I pay my witch for reads like this.
My witch came highly recommended via my shaman. My shaman is an affable fellow who dispenses various substances to open the doors of perception. I’ve participated in his ceremonies exactly once, when I ingested an extract of sassafras. Don’t think for a minute that my shaman is reckless. Rather, seeing that I was pretty nervous about the whole affair (I don’t even smoke weed), which included a sleepover with strangers (i.e. personal hell), he dosed me very mildly. So mildly, in fact, that when I told him I wasn’t feeling anything, and he dissolved something in a glass of water which I drank. Half an hour later, when he inquired as how I was feeling now, I reported that I felt pretty normal. But from the waist down, I was high as hell. He asked me to describe how my legs felt, to which I replied, “My legs are my jingle-jangles!” And that is what it feels like to take sassafras.
(For the record, I did not stay overnight with the strangers, but darted out at about 4:30 a.m., into ghostly streets of lower Manhattan with a Whole Foods bag of $40 worth of snacks I’d purchased to consume once the high wore off. You see, I’d been forbidden from consuming food since the previous morning, and beyond the perils of ingesting hallucinogenic drugs with strangers, my principle fear was that of hunger. I eat approximately twenty minutes. So, when me, my jingle-jangles and my giant bag of food got into the cab, having survived the fast and the strange people, we felt very accomplished indeed.)
Anyway, many of the other shah-people in attendance this evening were veterans of the sassafras circuit, open to various healing practices and earth traditions I’d never heard of. Including visiting a holistic doctor in Bed-Stuy, who supplies various potions to heal that which ails you. One guy described his girlfriend’s chronic mysterious illness, and how she has now abandoned western medicine altogether and consults only the witch. They refer to her as “the witch” with a jokey mirth, but her powers were undeniable. Another woman gave her a hearty endorsement about how she’d helped her wean off anti-depressants. At that point, the shaman went to his sha-bag, and pulled out several gallon-sized ziplocs full of mysterious leaves and brews that she had prescribed for various conditions.
a few specimens from my personal collection
My witch works out of a series of abandoned buildings in Bed-Stuy where she takes care of neighborhood stray cats, so at any moment there are about a dozen cats milling about, her centurions to the palace. On my first visit, she seated me in the parlor of the first building we would visit that day, which, to my knowledge is inhabited only by the cats. I sat on a low and puffy vintage couch, she across from me with her unlined skin, red lipstick, and dark shoulder length hair. She wore (and from subsequent visits, wears) all black, punctuated with a bright scarf. I expected some kind of hands-on examination, at least taking my pulse or some such, but there would be none of that. Instead, the witch asked me about my diet, drinking habits, prescription medications and vitamins, caffeine intake, mood, goals, and family to paint a comprehensive picture. Her prognosis:
You ave no qual-ee-tee of life.
RUDE! She said it with such French imperiousness that I bust out laughing and said “damn, ok!” She did not crack a smile. Instead she went through a somewhat incomprehensible explanation about motility in my gut and how it’s manifesting in my moods, etc etc. She perked up a bit delivering this lecture. She told me to cut all sugar, alcohol, and caffeine, and when I expressed my trepidation about a life with no vice, she sighed.
Fine. You can ave one ceeg-har-ette a night.
My witch prescribed me cigarettes. That is the most French thing that has ever happened.
And this is the way it goes. After she reams me out for my poor choices, we meander over to Crime Scene B, I mean, the apothecary, which is another stray cat republic down the block, where she stows her potions. The cost and quantity of these herbs is different every time I visit her. She marches around, pulling down giant glass containers of various herbs to create custom blends for the many problems she sees in me. In my daytime “tonic” tea (which is meant to replace coffee, but LOL), the only decipherable plant I detect is hibiscus. For nighttime, I’m equally lost, but when I dump two teaspoons into the pot, a puff of dust parachutes up. For all I know, dust may be the active ingredient. For my period, the tea contains actual pebbles and what I can only describe as sticks. And I will say: it is very, very effective. I get pretty gnarly cramps and with just ten minutes of brew time, the little rocks releasing their powers, and I’m walking on sunshine.
Could all this just be placebo effect, and a masochistic urge to be dressed down by a continental sorceress? Very possibly, but I endure my witch’s chastising because I actually find her to be pretty hilarious in an anti-social way (she says things to one’s face that we usually only think, or later remark upon to friends) and her potions work. Since our initial consultation six months ago, I have quit Klonopin (O, glorious Klonkies!) which I used to rely on at least several times a week to get to sleep. I sleep better, most of the time, “better” being around 4-5 consecutive hours of shut-eye, interrupted by several wake-ups of running to the bathroom for phantom pees and questioning all life choices. I can text her any time and she’ll come up with a custom cure, ranging from serviceable to ridiculous. She’s prescribed me a salty Russian table water available only in Brighton Beach, which I purchase by the cart load.
She’s told me that instead of taking Advil for a headache to fashion a poultice from ginger and flour to place over my liver and the to drink grapefruit juice with a pinch of cayenne. She tells me to fill the bathtub with ginger and soak, ten times a day and all night, if need be. Sometimes, she can be nice, and will offer career advice:
You should write a bestsellair about reech people and glamorous tings.
Relationship advice:
You must make for your boyfriend a salahd of five colors and a juice and light candles. It will be very sensual.
Fertility advice:
In six months your chances of natural conception will go to 20 percent. Do you want to bring your boyfriend here so I can explain this to him?
Sometimes, I get the sense that she cares. Most of the time, I kind of enjoy her telling me what to do. My therapist never tells me what to do, and if you read my past newsletter, I like nothing more than a smart person telling me what to do. So, I recommend you get a witch, or a warlock, or a ghoul, or a sorceress, or at the very least a bossy French woman to read the fuck out of you and provide unintentional tragicomedy and healing to your day. If you want to see mine, I can give you her info. Just steel yourself for her Gaullic abuses.
NEWS:
NO NEWS! (Is good news!)
OLD NEWS: Moi’s book on death fraud and disappearance, to which you are welcome to throw all five stars in this brave new star economy. Let’s all be wealthy in STARS!